No, she has that naive, bumbling personality that works well for those Disney-esque roles, but she’s also very capable of innuendo and sexiness. She comes off more like the innocent girl who simultaneously sees nothing wrong with sex. It’s a character often played by the Foreign Fanservice Girl (you look it up on TVTropes. I’m not gonna.)
In fact, that seems very perfect for Catwoman, as she has to start out very naive Selena Kyle, change to sexy when she becomes Catwoman, and yet still be able to pull off going back and playing Kyle again. She is one actress that can believably be all three characters.
Much better than someone like Michelle Pfeiffer who had to pretend to be the geeky girl.
Actually, Bane is a good schemer in the better stories he’s in. Some writers just use him as “ok, guy uses some form of future-steroids, I guess he’s big and dumb” but he really is supposed to a great tactician and planner, and more or less uses venom (the drug that makes him strong) just so he can has an edge against Batman/whoever else.
And if the name they released for Anne Hathaway is right (Selina) then yes, it’s Catwoman.
No, though I saw pictures of him from it when I was reminding myself who he was. As I said, he’s filled out, but he’s still not Bane.
The man should be huge. The kind of figure that causes people to assume the ‘dumb muscle’ stereotype applies. A body builder type, not the large end of average.
As I said, Bane was cool in “The Batman” cartoon, he had that fight club flavor and was quite mysterious in his “normal” form. In everything else, he’s just your very common SV trope of the late eighties/nineties where every super villain was a stupidly beefed up version of the main hero of the series, with more powers, and some ninja goons.
There’s a message you send to the audience when you feature a villain with body builder type muscles, and that message is “Not bright.” Bane looks like a WWF wrestler or a gay BDSMer. The latter one could be interesting if he is the acting villain, the lieutenant. But if the other villain is Catwoman?
Still, I would have prefered Batman against One villain and his organization. I dont think more than one supervillain adds anything in a Batman movie. Only exception I see is Batman returns.
Who says there’s more than one? Selina Kyle has often been portrayed as a pretty neutral, opportunistic character. She could very easily and realistically be love interest, friend, foe and ally all in the span of one movie.
Nolan has included several villains in his movies: Ra’s, Scarecrow, Zsasz, Falcone, Maroni, Joker, and Two-Face. That’s seven off the top of my head, and just in two movies. Usually in a comic book, there are several enemies in one story and Nolan has been working them in with no problems.
Selina Kyle isn’t supposed to be a weak, secretary like figure. Since the 80’s, she’s been a prostitute turned cat burglar. I think she even ran a brothel in DKR. She also has ties to the Falcone family…
Bane isn’t a big, dumb musclehead. He’s supposedly brilliant. He studied Batman for a full year and determined that it was Bruce Wayne. He also tried to get Catwoman to work for him. There’s a memorable cover from Kinghtfall featuring both of them.
The problem of casting such a role becomes significant, though. Body builders are noted for spending hours per day in the gym honing their muscles, not hours per day on the set, honing their acting. I recall this being a problem when trying to cast Kingpin for the Daredevil movie - the actor had to be huge, but he also had to convey an certain intellectual menace. Michael Clarke Duncan (who I personally thought did a good job) represented a risky compromise that might have alienated the fan base.
Heck, for Batman and Robin, they shoulda got someone else to play Mr. Freeze and let Schwarzenegger play a more prominent Bane.
How many great actors out there also look like professional wrestlers? I’d rather have a great actor buffed up my make-up/cgi than a huge guy who can’t act.
Well they were running low on their pool of available characters, so not too much of a surprise. Nolan has stuck with a fairly “realistic” version of Batman, so I would never have expected to see any supernatural or superpowered villains like Clayface and Croc, Sci-Fi characters like Freeze, or even campy mutants like the Penguin. Bane runs the risk of being sci-fi, depending on how they deal with the whole Venom thing, but pre-venom he’s OK, just like Ra’s works as long as you don’t have a Lazarus pit.
I like both actors, especially Tom Hardy, so we’ll see. I love Catwoman and don’t know too much about Bane, so we’ll see. In both cases though, I don’t get the impression that they’ll be quite like their comic book counterparts. Tom Hardy isn’t the ridiculously muscular type that Bane is. And Anne Hathaway just doesn’t have the core gravitas that someone like a younger Jolie could bring to the role and seems essential to the current comic book version. But Nolan’s Joker wasn’t quite the comic book Joker and yet was still fantastic, so it could work.
Have to agree here. I can definitely see her as an intelligent slinky sexy cat burglar. But more of a playful adventurous one, and not one carrying around any true darkness.
It didn’t. Sure, she’s seriously screwed up. But it comes across more like someone who is still fundamentally innocent inside acting out because they don’t understand the darkness they have gone through.
Whereas what I would expect the character of Selina Kyle to be is someone who has gone through darkness, and had it fundamentally affect her, in a way that she intimately understands, and fought her way out of, but still carries it with her such that it colors her perception of the world and human nature.
Given that she’s billed as Selina Kyle, it could well be that Selina, the normal person, is introduced in this movie, as a set-up to her becoming Catwoman in the next one. Because with as wildly successful as this iteration of the Batman movies has been, you know they’re already planning for the next one.
This is certainly Chris Nolan’s last one, and he seems to have been given a surprising amount of say in what goes into films, compared to Marvel’s overbearing approach that ruined both Spider-Man and Iron Man. So if Nolan says it ends at three, then I’m going to assume that it will be a long time before we see Batman again after this one.
I’m guessing Hathaway will be the “short black-hair + goggles” version of Catwoman. Which I quite liked in the things I’ve read (“Hush” and “Catwoman : When in Rome”)
I would have much much preferred someone other than these two characters, and I bet it’s the same kind of “edgier” idea that put Venom into the Spiderman movies.
I’d have chosen Hardy to play Hugo Strange (as was suggested earlier) or if you want an action foil-Deathstroke (long story short, he’s a merc-for-hire. Think evil Captain America).
And please no more Catwoman. What’s this damn fixation with her?
I just don’t like her. I know it’s probably unfounded but as an actress myself I am highly critical of actresses in Hollywood and in my opinion she just isn’t good. I have never liked her in anything and yes I’ve seen Rachel Getting Married.
Plus I agree do we really need ANOTHER catwoman? Yikes.
I agree with everyone else. Anne Hathaway as Catwoman=epic fail.
Julie Newmar - Vixen (especially as Ms Kitka in Batman the Movie)
Lee Meriweather - Vixen
Eartha Kitt - Vixen that purred…ooooh, I need a moment here, people.
Okay.
Michelle Pfeiffer - Epic Fail. While she has the smouldering look Catwoman needs , and wears the hell out of some leather, her acting chops were more like pork chops.
Halle Berry - Epic fail. Gorgeous woman. She can play a bitch, but not a sexy bitch.
I do. Not because I think Anne Hathaway would look super hot in the Catwoman costume (she would), but because she’s an important part of the Batman mythos. If you’re doing a self-contained trilogy like Nolan is, it would be a travesty to not include her.
It looks like it’s going to still be about the mob. I don’t really want to elaborate or name names, but if you’re familiar with The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, you know where it seems to be going.
